the list
by seb stan
Summary: Stiles has a ten-step plan to make Lydia Martin fall in love with him before they graduate. (human au, ten-shot)


**Title: **the list.

**Summary: **Stiles has a ten-step plan to make Lydia Martin fall in love with him before they graduate. (human au, ten-shot)

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Teen Wolf.

**Rating: **T, may change to M later.

**Word Count: **

**A/N: **hey, i'm a complete poop so i'm starting another teen wolf story whilst two chapters into _Vegas Lights_ because i'm an impatient human being. a lot of this was written on an iPad (i'm in thailand, so minimal computer access), but i proof-read it a few times, and hope it makes some sense.

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**step one; **make her notice me.

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It was Study Hall on a Wednesday, and as per usual, Stiles was staring at Lydia Martin.

Scott was talking to him, he could tell that much, and something about glow sticks passed his best friend's lips, but he was much more interested in the way that Lydia was twirling her strawberry blonde hair.

She was sitting diagonally from Stiles, and two rows ahead of him. Her positioning was perfect, and it allowed for Stiles to see both her face and the back of her head. She didn't see him staring, and proceeded to twirl her hair in a fake act of idiocy.

Ms. Blake voiced a question, and Lydia batted her eyes. Stiles saw her lips moving—_Jesus Christ, her lips are perfect_—to silent form the word 'Tesla', but she opted for a different answer.

"Um, Christopher Columbus?" She asked blankly, and Lydia's friends nodded in agreement.

"We aren't in History class, Lydia." Ms. Blake said, a hint of disappointment. "Does anyone else have a clue what class we're in?"

Stiles' hand went up, and she nodded at him. "Uh, Nikola Tesla. He invented alternating current, but he didn't get much recognition for it, even though it was pretty cool."

Lydia smoothly looked at Stiles over her shoulder, and he became convinced that he was having a heart attack. Her green eyes met with his plain ones, and she turned back to Ms. Blake.

"He didn't invent anything—he discovered it. It was present before his discovery, which makes it natural, not manmade. You can't invent something like a spectrum or electricity" The blonde boy next to her gave her a weird look, and she lowered her voice. "My dad made me watch this weird science show on it."

Her lips pursed when she was done talking, and Stiles wondered if it was her tell for when she was lying.

.

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"Way to ignore me in Science," Scott nudged Stiles with his shoulder, and Stiles nearly fell into a locker.

"I wasn't ignoring you. It was all part of the plan." He hissed, and Scott looked at him quizzically.

"Plan?"

"I have a ten step plan to make Lydia Martin fall in love with me." Stiles said confidentially, stopping at Scott's locker with him.

"I thought that was a ten year plan."

"It is a ten year plan. This is year ten, Scott. We're going to graduate in," Stiles glanced up at the electronic board with the hours until graduation, "91 days, 11 hours, and 47 minutes. I need to speed things along."

"What's your plan?" Scott asked, and Stiles could tell he was trying not to laugh.

"I made it in eighth grade, and it's ten simple steps to making Lydia love me. This is phase one of part one."

"How many phases are in each part?"

"I can't tell you. I'm not really sure yet." Stiles glared at Scott's amused expression, "Scott, I've been in love with her since the third grade, and she doesn't even know my name. It's time to play a little hardball."

"Are you ready to fight Jackson for her honor?" Scott glanced around the hallway as to seek out an angry Jackson, but no such figure was present.

"I think Jackson broke up with her." Stiles wasn't sure whether to feel happy that Lydia was free, or sad that Lydia was upset over it, "The asshole got a lacrosse scholarship, and wanted to 'untie the anchor'."

"Well, good luck with that," Scott said, and smiled at someone across the hall. "Speaking of Lydia, do you think Allison could like me?"

"How is that speaking of Lydia? They're both female? They both have longer hair than we do?"

"They're friends," Scott said plainly, and Stiles yielded. "Maybe I could put in a good word to Allison about you. So she could tell Lydia all about you, and put the idea of you in her head without a weird eighth-grade plan that you won't tell me."

"Speaking of Lydia, what college do you think she's going to?" Stiles asked, itching to bring the topic back to his dream girl.

"I don't know man. Probably—"

"Maybe an Ivy League School, depending on which one has the best mathematics programs. Maybe she'll go into engineering. Or create the next Pythagorean Theorem." Stiles smiled, and Scott gave him an incredulous look.

"Whatever, dude. Just finish phase one or whatever so you can stop talking about it."

.

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Stiles knew that Lydia had been going to the Beacon Hills Public Library to study every day after school since ninth grade, but he had never approached her.

His usual routine involved sitting in the corner, paging through a book, and watching her out of the corner of his eyes. He liked observing her—everything she did was ridiculously fascinating to him.

_Go up to her_, he nudged himself. Stiles told the inner voice to shut up, but it kept on egging him forwards, right to the point where he tripped over a stool and went down (along with five heavy books).

Lydia looked up at the commotion, and she seemed to be annoyed that something was distracting her. Before he could bite his nerves, he sloppily stood up, and slid into the chair next to hers.

"Hey, Lydia. You look, um, busy." He was opting for something along the lines of beautiful, or smart, or pretty, but his big mouth failed him.

"Not really," Her green eyes flickered back and forth across the dense pages of a textbook with a name too complicated for him to pronounce.

"So, uh. Do you like Ms. Blake?" Stiles asked, and he winced—he was talking to the literal girl of his dreams, and he was talking about a science teacher.

"No."

"No? I mean, she's pretty nice, and all..."

"She's a bad teacher. She barely knows anything about Science. She goes along what the textbook says, and even that she doesn't know well. She's awful at answering questions, and half the time, she's wrong. She can't even spell Hooke's name right, and it's a five letter name." Lydia folded her arms, and somehow, he found her intelligence hot.

"She doesn't even know about Christopher Columbus' secret passion for science." A flash of amusement flickered in Lydia's eyes, and Stiles felt like he was about to faint.

"Do you ever miss elementary school?" Stiles blurted, and she gave him a questioning look. "I mean, you always seemed really happy when you were on the monkey bars and stuff. You held the school record for going back and forth the most times. And you were good at the balance beam, too."

"I guess I was," Lydia replied, and she gave him a slightly different look—less indifferent, a bit curious. "What were you good at?"

"I, uh, I," He winced, trying to keep his mind open, "I was good at the slide. It was pretty easy. And, uh, the swinging."

For the first time, she smiled at him, and he felt his heart pick up the pace. _Goddamnit, heart, act like a normal human being. Or at least a normal heart._

"Huh," She said quietly, and looked down to her rattling phone. She picked it up with dainty hands—pink nail polish—and answered it.

After a moment of listening combined with noises of agreement, she got up, and left wordlessly. He didn't expect anything more of Lydia—she was mysterious, and no matter what the topic was, she left him wanting more.

More of what, he wasn't sure, but he _was_ sure of the fact that he would never get enough of Lydia Marin.

.

.

At two in the morning, he called Scott, his happy nerves making sleep out of the question.

"Phase two is complete," Stiles said, and waited for Scott's reply. After a moment, he realized that he hadn't dialed a number—all he'd done was pick up his phone, and start talking to no one.

After he had an actual human being on the line, he repeated his statement, and waited for Scott to return his excitement.

"How did you complete... whatever that is at two in the morning?" A beat came, "Actually, if it's masturbating or something weird, don't tell me."

"Why the hell would I call you at two in the morning to tell you I got myself off?" He demanded, and shook my head. "No. At the library after lacrosse. I had an actual conversation with Lydia."

His excitement was causing his volume to raise, and his dad knocked on the wall to hint Stiles that he needed to shut up.

"That's, uh, great. And why are you telling me this now?"

"Because I had a conversation with Lydia Martin. Are you listening to me? She asked me a question! An honest to God question."

"Wow, a question. I've never heard of that before." Scott was always more sarcastic when he was deprived of sleep.

"Look, if you can't share my enthusiasm, you can just hang up." Stiles heard the phone tick off, and he rolled his eyes. "Good for nothing jerkface."

For a while, Stiles tried to plan out how he would reach phase three, or _what_ it would be, but life wasn't so simple. He couldn't script out a conversation with Lydia—she was unpredictable, and much too smart to be limited by what his mind would make up for her. He knew she was smart—maybe even a genius—but he wasn't sure the extent of her intelligence, and exactly how much she could discover.

He remembered that she was in his math class in Junior year (as she was this year), and for the first few weeks, she got perfect scores on every test she took. Their teacher was amazed, but after a while, Lydia's clique caught on, and she started making mistakes on purpose, and getting exactly a B- on every test for the rest of the year.

Once, when their teacher was sick, and they graded each other's papers, he had received Lydia's. Like always, she got a B-, but as he looked more closely, he could see that every problem was done correctly, but in extremely complex ways that left no room for error. He learned that Lydia tried to challenge herself, and she liked doing what was hard because it stimulated her mind, and made her think.

And Stiles wasn't nearly intelligent enough to understand her thought process, but he was close enough to rival her, to try and challenge her. Without speaking to her, he knew that about her, and as he let himself fall asleep, he wondered if anyone bothered to look inside of Lydia Martin's extraordinary mind.

She filled his dreams, and he woke up with a smile.

.

.

At lunchtime, Stiles sat with Scott, Isaac, and Allison. He wasn't able to talk about the ruler of his mind seeing as both Isaac and Lydia's best friend were present, but he settled for watching Scott and Allison banter.

Scott had a huge smile on his face, and was watching Allison with animation as she talked about her latest archery lesson. No one at the table really understood what she was saying about the different kinds of draws and the angle of her bow, but she was a character, and she was fun to listen to. She had a cute smile, and Stiles could see why Scott was so infatuated by her.

She was the kind of girl that was easy to read—just by looking at her, you could see what kind of mood she was in. She wasn't a puzzle of any form, and for Stiles, it was a reason not to be drawn to her. (He felt as though he needed justification for being indifferent towards every girl he had met other than the simple excuse of "She's not Lydia," that he used a few years back.)

Scott said something to Allison in a teasing voice, and she laughed. Stiles could see the happiness in her eyes, and he smiled as well—they were good together, and they made each other happy in their own adorable ways. He knew that he had no need to intervene to match them up—the two seemed to gravitate towards each other, and without any pushing, they would end up falling towards each other.

He decided to listen into their conversation as he noticed awkward stuttering coming from Scott.

"Are you, uh, busy on Saturday? At lunch?" Scott asked nervously, and Allison nodded

"Yeah, my dad's driving me out to LA," A beat came, and her playful smile came back, "But I'm free for dinner."

"Dinner's good. Great. Who do you like? I mean, food. What do you like eating for food?" _Wow, Scott. "Eating for food." Is that what people eat for? Man, I always thought they ate for electricity. _

"I like pasta. I can fit a lot in my mouth, so make sure to take me somewhere with a lot of food." Allison winked at Scott at the not-so-subtle sexual implication, and his lopsided jaw dropped. Allison grinned, and grabbed her apple and string cheese when Lydia walked by.

"Where are we going?" Lydia asked coolly after Allison stood, and the green eyes flickered over to Stiles. His bite of pizza nearly fell from his mouth, but he managed to swallow it down.

Allison replied, but Stiles' ears were a bit too clouded with the incessant mental chanting: _Lydia Martin looked at you Lydia Martin looked at you Lydia Martin looked you and she didn't look away a full three and a half seconds oh my shit._

After a moment of mental panic, Stiles looked back up at her. Her back was turned to him, and he spoke to her with an awkward wave. "Hey, Lydia."

When she turned around again, she wore a small smile, and he couldn't help but watch the way her skirt twirled when she turned. That, combined with the smile, made his heart double its speed, "Hey, Stiles."

He didn't realize until later that night that he never told her his name.

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**A/N: **the other chapters are going to be a bit different, but in case anyone was confused, here's a quick explanation.

Stiles was never brave enough to talk to Lydia, but he's still liked her since the third grade. He and Scott are best friends. Allison likes archery as a sport (non supernatural okay), and because Lydia never had the mental breakdowns caused by Peter, she's still popular.

Any other questions, just ask in the reviews, and I'll try and answer at the bottom of the next chapter. If you want to talk to me (even though i'm an uncool cucumber), just PM me, or message me on tumblr (url is 'irornman', or look in bio)

**Question of the day: **What do you think the next step is going to be? If you can guess correctly (or close to correctly), I'll give you cookies. Or a one-shot with your prompt. Or wolfsbane. You know, whatever works.


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